When Tony Ain't Happy
by JunieBee
Summary: It's been a little glum around the tower lately. Time for a team pick-me-up.


There was something wrong. A subtle thing- everyone felt it, but it was too indescribable, too intangible to bring up to the others.

Jane and Bruce worked quietly together, which wasn't necessarily unusual- every so often they'd just have an 'intense focus day' and welcomed no one's input. This wasn't a day like that. They just found a lack of will to speak their thoughts when shareable ones occurred.

"Doctor Banner, Doctor Foster." Tony nodded to them as he came in and went to his workspace to rifle a drawer.

"Hi, Tony."

"Hey."

The two smiled subdued smiles, but there was still some sort of- like a fire blanket, smothering something in the air around them.

A phone buzzed, and one lick from the chorus of 'Dirty Deeds' sounded before Tony'd answered. "Rhodes." His one hand continued rifling while the other held the phone, and apparently found its target without Tony looking. "Seriously- it's mandatory? Like now? Nonononono, stay there, I'm coming." Tony's voice raised a fraction of an octave, his patter speeding to a comfortably babbling pace. "Please, like they would even let you back in- Monte Carlo. No. Monte Carlo. Not listening, nope, lalala- yeah? We'll hit Brooks Brothers on the way. Cool." As he headed out with tool and phone, the last thing the two silent scientists heard was "Love you too, Huggybear." before the door sealed sound out again.

Bruce looked positively stricken. Jane thought the tension in her face meant she did, too.

"That's what it was..."

"Is he mad at us?" Jane asked softly.

"I wouldn't have said so... I've seen him angry before, but it's not like I've known him for years or anything. He wasn't hot, he wasn't cold..."

"Could he just be preoccupied? Busy?"

"Not so busy he couldn't make sudden plans for Monte Carlo with his friend."

Together they let that observation sink in.

Jane cleared her throat. "Um. Okay. This- this is recent, because he was still friends with _us_ two weeks ago. He called me Trillian, and we had ice cream in the kitchen."

Bruce nodded. "Then we need to figure out what it was that made him mad, or hurt, or whatever it is, and reverse it."

"It's not just us, either. The whole tower's felt like this- he didn't even make a hammer comment while Thor was practicing with Mjolnir, yesterday."

"We'll call a team meeting then, as soon as Tony's left to meet Colonel Rhodes."

"If you would excuse me, Doctor Banner, Doctor Foster- it might be prudent to include Ms. Potts in your meeting. Also, Mr. Stark has exited the premises as of 30 seconds ago."

"Pepper, yeah. Thanks, JARVIS." Bruce held the door for Jane, and they went to round up their housemates.

oOo

"No, I don't think he's angry at any of you. He's still letting you stay here- he hasn't mentioned any resource restrictions. And he hasn't told me about it, which makes me think he's probably... you might call it hurt. He's falling into an old thought pattern." Pepper conjectured, smoothing her impeccable skirt under the eyes of five unhappy superheroes.

"From before he started to trust us?" Steve asked, a little horrified and hurt himself.

"Before he learned to trust anyone. This hasn't been easy for him- Tony's spent almost his entire life believing with utter certainty that he's impossible to live with. Impossible to like on any level deeper than acquaintanceship. For a while, there were exactly three people he let close to him. One – me- he employed. I think he thinks Rhodey is some sort of masochist. And the third was his godfather, Obadiah." The faces around her tightened- they knew that story. "He's been getting better. After he officially stopped employing me and I stayed anyway, and after you all moved in..."

"Okay, so you're saying something knocked him backwards." Natasha pressed.

"It could've been anything- just the wrong word on a dark day, you know? Building faith takes time."

"No." Bruce stated. "I mean yes, but we have to be more proactive than that. Tony has other places to go- his mansion here, the one in California. It would be harder to get him back then get him to stay, I think."

"An intervention, then?" Steve asked, but shook his head. "I don't think he's likely to cooperate with that."

"He can't be allowed to see pity or manipulation in whatever you do. And no, just telling him wouldn't be convincing." Pepper agreed. "He'll get defensive and you'll lose him to his own stubbornness."

"This... fragility. It seems so unlike him." Thor murmured, having been quiet up to that point.

"We all have weak points. Capture him, torture him, he'll change the world. Threaten the world, he'll be a hero." Natasha stated.

"Give him a place with people he likes, he'll destroy himself." Pepper finished sadly.

"Well, that's what teams are for. Shouldering each other's weak points." Captain America spoke decisively. "So how do we do this?"

oOo

Tony returned from Monte Carlo four days later, again on call with Rhodey as he walked into the residence suites through the elevator doors. "Hey, no, okay, I've got three just like it only not in that awful lime green color. What are you griping about, it's not like I bought it for you, I _won_ it. And you were my date to that carnival, Sugarcheeks, so you get the big fluffy twin-vee, five-second zero-to-sixty teddy bear. Oh, what was that? Couldn't catch it, I'm going through a tunnel... cause I _installed_ a tunnel... talk to you later, Snuggles, say hi to the fam. Fizz, static, click." He hung up on Rhodey's audible protests just in time for Hawkeye to jump from the ceiling in front of him.

"Stark! Finally! You're on my team! You can shoot, right? You're on my team!"

"Barton- yeah, but- what team?" Tony sputtered while Clint dragged him into a crouch and hustled him into the small room that served as a coat closet.

"Ssh! This is your weapon. It's part of you, now. The hostiles are everywhere- trust only me, you got it? _We're_ the team." Tony grunted as a super-soaker was shoved into his chest, reservoir full, pump primed.

"You're kidding."

"Ssh!" Clint hissed again, and clutched Tony's shoulder. "Do you hear that?"

Falling silent, they heard the slightest creaking in the plaster above them. Eyes on the grate in the corner, Barton gestured Tony to the adjacent wall and took the opposite, raising his own water gun. The moment the grate cover fell, Clint darted forward, dragging a titian-haired spy half into the room and then leaping back, firing a steady stream of water at her.

"Lay down cover fire! Retreat! Retreat!" he yelled, and Tony took over drenching the Black Widow as Clint pulled the door open and covered him as he backed through it.

"God DAMN you, Clint!" Natasha screamed, and continued screaming as she pulled herself free of the grate and upright, shielding her face from the water. "You can't run forever! Give it up!"

"Never!" he cried, and Tony lunged to shut the door, thumbing it locked with his bio-print.

"She's going to kill us!" he yelped. "I don't even know why!"

"Cause you shot her in the face with a water gun and locked her in a closet!" Clint laughed, then put on a serious expression, clasping Tony's shoulder. "Listen Tones, you and me, we're the last stand of freedom in this place. If we want the sort of world where a man can eat his damn Little Debbies at breakfast, or play his music while he does target practice at three a.m., we're going to have to fight for it! Are you with me?"

Tony stared, and a smile started in his eyes and spread across his face. "Sir, yes Sir."

Clint laughed, but put his game face back on immediately. "Good man. Now-" they were interrupted as Thor appeared at the top of the staircase, pointing Mjolnir at Clint with menacing intent.

"Relinquish the pastries, Hawkeye. Do not force my hand against you."

Behind them, the click and static of an electronic lock being overridden sounded.

"Ohh, no." Clint muttered.

"Run!"

They booked down a corridor.

"THOR'S pop-tarts!?"

"He doesn't get every pop-tart just because he likes them!" Clint defended himself, and Tony laughed a high-pitched giggle of a laugh.

"We're so dead." They dodged down another hall to a back stairway.

"Okay, Steve's in the common media room I'm pretty sure- he thinks I stashed all his pants there for some reason. And Bruce-"

"AND Bruce?"

"Hey, turning into a big, green wrecking crew can only excuse you from so much. And it's never an excuse to escape retribution for buying decaf coffee and not adequately warning a man."

"Ooh, yeah. So where is he?"

"Should be looking for every handle and doorknob from his suite somewhere in the second-floor gym. Darcy, Jane, and Pepper barricaded themselves into a third-floor guest room with some of Nat's liberated chocolate and all of Steve's pants and, like, The Breakfast Club or some crap. They're not a threat. We need to make our own base, preferably with defensible exits and at least one usable window should the worst happen."

"There's a room connected to my workshop, between it and the launchpad. I keep some spare clothes and a sofa- roof access, two exits, and most of you don't know it's there."

"Awesome. Lead the way, soldier."

It was tricky business. Bruce and Steve had apparently given up their individual searches to team up and look for them, Steve wearing a borrowed set of trousers that fit him even worse than they fit Bruce, being too short as well as too wide. Clint and Tony managed to access a maintenance hatch and shimmy up a floor to where Thor was helpfully raging, giving them the noise they needed to sneak past and up again to Tony's private workshop. A palm print later, they had breathing room.

"Oh, you- I'm so killing you _so_ hard for that!"

"Words, Tinman. You couldn't beat me for all the rest of the world's money."

They grunted at each other for a few more minutes, racking up kill points and occasionally jostling each other with claims of screen-watching or spawn-point camping.

"So... which straw was it, Mr. Camel?" Tony eventually asked. "What prompted the crime-spree-slash-revolution?"

"Ah, y'know, the time was ripe." Clint shrugged. "Actually, I was out for a couple days on a mission and coming back was like- you know when you leave a house your pets piss in? And it's fine, but then you get back and you realize the smell didn't go away, you just got used to it?"

"Um... no, but okay..."

"It was _dreary_ around here, man. People were moping, moving slow. Had been for about a month and we were all just cooking in it. Place needed a kick."

"A month?" It had been a month since he'd been politely disinvited from attending the Grand Prix this year- not that it mattered, since he hadn't really planned on going, but he'd been out of sorts already. It seemed silly now. He wondered what had bummed everybody else out.

"Yeah, you probably didn't notice it either, but you would've today if I hadn't started the freedom fight. Which did need to happen anyway, really."

"You are ten kinds of hero. I'm having you bronzed."

Hawkeye grinned, punching Stark's shoulder, then froze. "Did you hear that?"

oOo

"We fought a good fight. We could never have predicted this betrayal." Clint assured him, and two wide sets of eyes stared accusingly at a third.

Whose owner rolled them and said "Oh, please." Her bazooka-sized water gun never wavered from the point between Tony's eyes.

"Seriously, Pep, this is getting reflected in your performance review." Tony said, on his knees alongside Clint in the communal kitchen, hands clasped behind his head.

"I run the company now, Tony. I'm beyond performance reviews."

"Did you really think our loyalty could be bought?" Jane asked, covering Clint.

"Well technically it was." Darcy pointed out, pumping her gun unnecessarily. "But Natasha offered so much more."

"All right, that's enough." Steve interrupted before Clint could ask what the higher price had been. Their Captain stood before them in pressed, fitted trousers, flanked by Bruce, who was fiddling with a screwdriver and a small, latched box, and Thor, who was shovelling rectangular pastries into his mouth like a machine. They met Steve's eyes unflinchingly, chins raised in defiance. "Are you going to defend yourselves?"

"Let Tony go. I pressured him into it. He didn't do anything." Clint began, only to be overridden.

"Uh, no. I see what you're doing, but no. Your cause was righteous, and I supported it willingly, so you're not facing this alone." Tony stated, lifting his chin even further.

"A noble warrior's sentiments." Thor commented past his snack food. "On Midgard it seems there is honor even among pop-tart thieves."

"And you did get them back..." Bruce pointed out, finished with the latch and setting his box on a counter.

"You're not letting them off!" Natasha protested, and Steve shook his head.

"No, but I don't think you'll be in charge of their sentencing."

The two prisoners paled at the idea that that had been the plan as the Black Widow growled mutinously.

oOo

"I'm starting to think Darcy might be more scary than Tasha." Clint commented, laid out over the kitchen island with his hands in vice-like grips. He winced as one grip became more vice-like than the other.

"You know it." Darcy agreed from the breakfast bar, where Tony was not listening to Clint. He was wheedling Pepper.

"I've got like three investor's meetings and a patent presentation this week, Pep, c'mon."

"You've got five meetings actually, and two presentations. I had to reschedule last week's when you took off to Monte Carlo without warning me." she informed him sweetly, dotting the center of a white daisy in the middle of his strawberry pink (scented!) fingernail. "Don't worry, though. You'll still have plenty of time to iron out Steve's pants."

"Actually, I'd better do that. I don't think burning the pleats in wrong will help us any." Clint called over, cringing slightly as Jane retrieved a bottle of sparkling gold polish from Darcy's bag.

"I've never ironed in my life." Tony agreed. "So I'll do the doorknobs and stuff on Bruce's floor."

"And you can do them in your nice new shirts!" Darcy exclaimed as Bruce came in with two freshly screen-printed tees. The prisoners craned their necks to see and groaned.

"If anyone actually does, I'm punching them." Clint growled as Bruce laid "Call me Katniss" over his stomach. He left his hands still under pain of torture as Natasha and Jane moved to his toenails.

"We don't have to wear those... out? Do we?" Tony winced, "Ironman is (Fe)male" draped over his torso.

"Of course you do. On _every_ pop-tart run this week." Steve declared, and they groaned again.

"You know, Malibu is really nice this time of year." Tony said. A few breaths stuttered, though he didn't notice them. "Whattaya say, Birdman?"

Normal respiration resumed. Pepper slapped him sharply above the navel. "Take it like a man."

His head fell back to the countertop. "I hate you all."

Smiles, small but strong, made their way around the room.


End file.
